Andaman & Nicobar MP Bishnu Pada Ray and family members of Shyamal Mandal, the student of an engineering college in Thiruvanathapuram who was found killed near Kovalam in October 2005, have urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and CBI Director Anil Kumar Sinha to ensure a speedy trial in his murder case which has been at a standstill for the past four years.
The trial in the murder, probed by CBI, has stopped due to a change of the case from the CBI’s court in Kochi to Thiruvananthapuram.
Initially, the probe was handled by the Kerala police but it was shifted to the CBI after the High Court’s intervention in 2008. In 2010, the CBI filed chargesheet against Andaman-based trader Mohammed Ali and Durga Bahadur from Nepal, working in the Island, for murdering the student and extorting money from the student’s family. But the CBI has so far failed to nab Bahadur even after repeated alerts to Interpol and Nepal police.
Both the accused landed in Thiruvanathapuram from Andaman and murdered Shyamal even after extorting money from his family. Shyamal belonged to Andaman Islands.
CBI had tracked down the bank accounts where the family deposited the ransom and nailed the accused.
The chargesheet was filed in the Kochi CBI court and trial had continued for more than a year.
However, towards the end of 2011, the CBI had started a new court in state capital Thiruvananthapuram and this case was shifted there.
The trial stopped completely after the formation of the new CBI court in Thiruvananthapuram where the case was scheduled to be transferred, said the MP and Shyamal’s father Basudev Mandal in separate letters to the PM.
But till date this case has not reached the Thiruvananthapuram CBI court, they said adding we are not getting any feedback from CBI for the past four years about the details of trial.
“Please give directions to the CBI’s Prosecution Officers in Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram to speed up the procedures to list this case in Thiruvananthapuram CBI court for speeding up the trial,” they urged.